


In the Dark

by orphan_account



Category: Project Wingman (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Physical Intimacy, will they/won't they
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29034411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A night out, and the escape from.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Not canon, and by reading this you accept that it isn't canon but parody. 
> 
> I saw the original prompt for this posted on the PW discord so I took snippets from that to make this.

Most people like Robin Kuo have been through a proper childhood of sorts: A home, parents, a caring family, enough food to eat and an education put forth. Futures and opportunities sprawling out from them that culminate in a peaceful life. All of this taken place in the backdrop of a place that most people would called civilized. Before she became a mercenary, civilization was really, only, the Federation. Like many things she has learned in her tenure of becoming a mercenary, she is wrong about her presumptions.

Out in the Periphery, contrary to what the Federation education system would tell her, are rather quaint and pleasant countries and states whose day-to-day life don’t fall too far outside of the suburbs of Ulaanbaatar or (from what she hears from her pilots) the metropolitan life that is supposedly there in Cascadia. There are cities not unlike her home, but there are also bombed out, failed states that still dictate the balance of regions as would-be warlords and mercenaries pick at their bones.

Where they are now, within the glass and sand cities of the East Periphery, is between the two. Giant cities of opulence and might surrounded by war-torn fields as unstable as the sand that wipe over dunes.

This is one of the rare cities on Earth where mercenaries and common citizens walk side by side, and in the dark of night with the city glistening neon tears amidst its downtown, no one can know who is who, and perhaps that is the dream for people who bare the golden roundel of a mercenary creed.

She is, despite everything, still a mercenary. In that city, it does not mean much, but she is not the only outsider to walk those streets.

Sicario, for its performance in a recent contract and a fairly high-profile destruction of a prototype “city of the future”, Kaiser, the Boss, has decided none other than to bring them as far away from that place and treat them to one such night (or week, depending on how hard some people go in celebration.) These types of celebrations often drop Sicario’s reserves down to threadbare lines, all for the sake of golden encrusted food, alcohol which predates the Calamity, and pounds of the more recreational type of drugs that people like them are more than willing to partake in. Celebration is expensive clothes, expensive hotels, opulence sought after by people who don’t see futures for themselves, whose retirement are either explosive in nature or bloody. Prez sometimes imagines she is the only person in Sicario who sees a future for herself that doesn’t end up in her death by warfare, and further she wonders if she’s the only one who sends money to a place of savings.

Of course it’s not an easily trackable thing that she does: the money she sends back comes in the forms of laundered bonds and materials right back to her family’s business, and they keep an account for her to keep building up and use if the business requires it. She isn’t really too concerned about its usage by her family.

One good sortie with the man she calls her pilot is all she really needs to retire for life.

It’s a brutal cycle, of the highest highs of gains, to the lowest lows that come with pain and loss.

Tonight is a high night, and thankfully Hitman Team treats her as their own. She is, practically, their own. The way they fight, they way they have their successes in the air as mercenary fighter pilots, they have more than enough money for Prez to sit there in that high-class club with some sort of fluffy animal coat around her shoulders, trying her best to fit into the splendor as Comic is out of her mind on vodka she is sipping from a glass that uses chilled diamonds to keep cold and Dip has what Robin can only guess is a cordium crusted suit that is both glitzy and keeps him warm enough.

There are worse ways for them to spend money she supposes, glancing over her shoulder at a thundering night club which is louder than most battlefields, and probably flashier as well as lights and lasers join in a spastic dance of EDM and the vague mass of arms and heads that make up the dance floor Sicario is over in their suites, getting bottle service that is 10x more than most people’s yearly salaries.

Benefits when targets killed directly correlate to money paid out, and she has attached herself to someone who lets the blood money flow.

She’s never been quite sure of Monarch’s own tastes when it comes to these splurges of spending, and it’s quite evident tonight that he is as he always is: the wingman and caretaker of Dip and Comic as they fully indulge in their benefits of a mission well done, Based on how complacent Comic is when she has that drunken haze upon her and curls herself into Dip on the couch they share, it’s a fairly easy position to be in.

Gunfire breaks out amidst plunging beats and electronic synths, but it’s no matter. A cursory glance out by Prez is met by the roaring cheering of the dance floor: Kaiser has replaced a stripper at her post, not to dance, but to simply unload an assault rifle into the ceiling as he rips literal cash and gemstones out of his pockets and throws them to the dancing crowd. It is his nature to be on top of the crowd of raving (literally) masses, and quite clearly he is in control as the floor manager picks up his own diamonds from the floor and lets Sicario do as they have done for the last five hours and unload pistols and rifles in celebratory fire into the ceiling as the DJ goes completely nuts.

Kaiser is screaming as well, and he is screaming with a fervor that comes with his command, and it only raises the tone of the evening that is barely muted from where the tamer mercenaries of Sicario are.

A quick look at the DJ booth reveals something more: The DJ has been run out.

It’s Galaxy instead, and he is back where he is perhaps most at home: behind the sound stage of music records and-

“God damn. Galaxy really knows his shit.” Diplomat says in between puffing his cigar.

“Mmmm ‘course he does.” Comic is as livid as she usually is when she drinks. She’s no longer the crippled alcoholic as she once was: no she’s only a blood money mercenary now, so every once and a while she relapses and Hitman as a whole is given a look into the version of her that wandered the Periphery for two years. “Wheeeere the _fuck_ is bottle service lady.”

Monarch has waved her off several times already given that Comic does not need more, and it’s quite fine, everyone has downed their shots except their escorts.

Ronin is assigned as escorts for Hitman from time to time, and they do their job well, suited up, gunned up, and giving any would be onlooker the stiff elbow if they were curious about approaching them. Special forces in plain sight, leaving Hitman to enjoy themselves, dressed like yuppies and cocaine cowboys and not hardened soldiers. Comic having her shoulders bared out and Prez in a twinkling silver dress certainly provides the boys with a certain air about them. The way Diplomat has his arm naturally around Comic as she struggles between being lost in the sauce and her sanity is typical of them like this. It’s cute, but Monarch and herself aren’t allowed to ask any question of it. It’s one of those nebulous things about Hitman that doesn’t need to be asked about. It simply is.

Monarch in his own suit is understated compared to Diplomat’s glamour, but the suit he has is for the sake of being let into the club, and not for his own enjoyment.

“ _This!”_ Diplomat waves his arms up to the whole of it and Comic grumbles having come off of his perfectly comfortable chest. “Is what we should do with our blood money. We should open up a club! Think of it! Living like this every single night! I’m a god damn genius!” Some ash from his cigar in his mouth peppers Comic’s black hair, but she doesn’t notice as Prez simply nods, goading on Hitman 2 as she munches on tater tots that might’ve been ordered at some point. She’s got a stomach for alcohol actually, and the gut to keep herself coherent for longer than people might expect of her, the carbs also help out.

When Monarch speaks he does so with the rather to the pointedness that flight leaders like him need. There’s an assumption that he’s a silent man, but that’s not true. He chooses his words in the same way he chooses his shots: it’s all done with the confidence of reason, backed up by a man who knows how to make decisions.

He asks, simply, if you’d want to deal with people like themselves every night.

Another burst of gunfire racks out from Kaiser as people cheer on and pistols are also fired up into the ceiling from various mercs that just so happen to be there.

Dip blankly stares out as anyone who’s looking at him knows he’s half there from the drink. “Yeah point taken boss man.” He hangs his head back along the couch’s cushions as he and Comic daze together.

“My first job was working at a bar you know.” Prez doesn’t know why she decided to say that as she puts another fried potato nugget down her gullet and realizes that garlic parmesan dressing on wings and tots is totally worth getting on her glittery dress. She can, somehow, afford it. It’s not like they keep these things for more than one celebration anyway. Dip tried to save his clothing but he never found the room or time to care for them in between their deployments. She says it aloud and the only one that can really only talk back to her is Monarch.

It’s a little strange, even after the year or so she’s known him and been his WSO. Seeing him outside of a plane is one thing; outside of that whole dressage of being a fighter pilot. It’s not that he is a fighter jockey, or even puts out like one, it’s just that his entire being, the character of him to almost all of Sicario, is that of Hitman 1.

He has a name.

The last she learned of Hitman, which is odd to her, seeing as he is her pilot. Though he has one. It does not drop from Comic or Diplomat’s lips however, despite how easy that each other’s names are used by each other in their hushed tones. If it is a name that is his, it is not the name that he hears often:

His name is Monarch, and he’s sitting next to her, an arm across the back of the couch as he looks at her, giving her a nod that he has heard what she said. He tilts his head one day, mouthing a word:

_Yeah?_

She blinks several times, considering what she is doing.

“Yeah.” She affirms. “First job outside of the family business that is. More cash is always good.”

He rolls his eyes. Of course it is, he says, hand gesturing to his two wingmen who are about eight inches or eight minutes from being totally occupied with each other in their own little world. They are mercenaries, he explains, in the end.

“I know, I know, it’s just, sticky floors at the end of the night were just the worst. _Blegh._ I prefer something a little more dignified.” She recoils at the memory and Monarch can only sympathize. Once, long ago, he worked dirty jobs. Perhaps not as dirty as the ones they do now, but dirty nonetheless. He tells her a memory of a childhood he had, growing up, and she can’t really believe what she’s hearing: That this man used to be someone else.

It’s not odd the way he says it, it’s not as if he is bursting from some cell of emotional containment, he tells it like a normal man, and suddenly Prez is hyper aware of his arm that is to her back along the couch. She scrunches her fur coat just a little closer to her as the light show outside dims.

His eyes flash by the trick of the light.

“Ever thought you’d end up like this Monarch?” Prez has to ask, holding a tater tot in her hand, feeling its crispy fried edges and the salt that falls off of it. Her hands are calloused, and her nails aren’t done, because honestly who would care? Her hands are that of a crew chief, and they are rubbed numb from metal and scrap. She feels the muted feeling of the tot through her pads but its fleeting.

Monarch shrugs. It seems like where he’s supposed to be.

She didn’t explain how she got that first job, but it was a pretty cut and dry tale: Her first boyfriend was the son of the bar’s owner. Benefits of the jobs was all the knowledge of hideaways and nooks and crannies that came with being its maintainer, but she only remembers the dark now between the drink and the sudden dimness of the club as Galaxy spins up another dark track of synths.

In speaking of things you did in the dark: It’s happening between Comic and Dip, and there’s very little stopping them the second his hand comes to grip her waist and she reaches up with both arms.

“You think they’ll actually do it this time?” She asks out loud as if to dissuade the two pilots, but it doesn’t matter, their chemistry, lubed by booze, has led to the usual logical end point of a good portion of these types of nights.

Monarch, again, shrugs. They’ll do what’s best for them, he nods. With a hand up, the suited Ronin is beckoned back. “Hitman 1?” They ask, and Monarch only refers to Dip and Comic, just before Comic throws her legs over Dip’s. “Ah, uh, right. I’ll get them back.” Monarch, before he lets the Ronin go, simply slips in a bond note into his pocket, and the SOF operator only nods appreciatively.

“Alright, come on you two, you can make emotional mistakes back at your bunks.” It doesn’t take much for the operator to haul both Comic and Dip over his shoulders. Dip doesn’t fight it, even if he is the better off of the two, and what fight Comic does put up stops after several seconds, her gun clattering out of her dress onto the floor. In the excitement and the rising sound of another music set the Ronin doesn’t notice, leaving the last two Hitmen alone.

Prez reaches over to the floor to grab it, the glass door that separates their lounge and specific seating arrangements over the club opened letting in a cacophony of a party. It’s a weird sight she must be, dressed up nicer than she has in a hot minute, legs brought up to the couch and tucked in more comfortably as she toys with Comic’s duty firearm.

She’s the only one in Hitman that carries like she does, without exception. It’s a revolver, so she knows what she’s doing, for she carries one as well when warranted. It’s a revolver that could only be made in their homeland that makes this one special. It’s wood and blackened steel, the sheen and polish of it immaculate. She swears even the rounds have been wiped to a mirror shine as she closes it off and holds it. “There is certainly a Cascadian touch to everything that comes out of that country… Does everything have to look good for you?” She breaths impressed to Monarch.

The Cascadians have always appreciated beautiful things. He shuffles to face her completely, arm propping up his head. The way he says it, the way he looks at her, it’s… It’s a compliment and she knows it. It’s not quite a tease, not quite an outright flirt; she thinks maybe that she does just look good tonight, and in the glassy reflections of that room, yeah, she admits she does. It’s a very weird proposition: maybe in another life where she never became a mercenary, where she hasn’t killed people, she might be a sputtering little mechanic getting flustered over a sharply handsome man being as polite to tell her she looks nice.

Though that isn’t the Robin Kuo that she is. She is Prez.

“Easy there flyboy,” she narrows her eyes with a smirk on her lips. “I’m not one to be woo’d so easily.”

It’s a genuine smile which Monarchs puts on himself. He didn’t think it’d be as the innocent face he puts on is true. He only wanted to get in the comment, because it is nice to see them all, to see her, out of the rather heavy and utility-minded clothing they all wear on the day to day.

“Oh you’re not too bad yourself... That is if you’re heading out to a high school prom.”

The bickering nature between Comic and Dip has rubbed off on her after all this time, and Monarch recognizes it as he crosses his arm and pouts, taking his glass and sipping from it all the while, looking out to the dance floor.

Prez can only giggle more as she knows that he’s making it look like he took that personally.

They chat for once, completely disarmed (in the overarching sense), her hands fiddling with Comic’s revolver. It’s a nice experience between them that is as casual. Just the right amount of gunfire that keeps erupting on the dance floor as music beats with their hearts in the dark.

How often do they get to talk like this? Without the context of the mission or work? It is so deep in Sicario that they exist that talking of anything that’s remotely normal feels wrong. They only talk about past lives, about riches to be made, and near-death experiences and the grandest of war stories in between contract work and briefings. It does something so horrible to Monarch though: it humanizes him. When you know nothing about a man, everything more is an exponential gain. In between stories of former lives, of who they are and why they are, Prez can only think to herself if she alone knows what Monarch is telling her about himself, and, if it is true, why her?

He asks for her permission, arm brought around her. It touches more the furry barrier that is the coat around her shoulders. He doesn’t seem too nervous about it, as if he’s just asking her for an opinion about a flight path or a weapon loadout.

She blinks a few times, but shakes her head straight as she nods enthusiastically. “Oh why not.” It really doesn’t take much consideration. Not at all. She’s very comfortable like this with a man’s arm around her shoulders and the momentary visage that she is a rich woman in a glitzy night club. It only helps that it is Monarch. Then again if she had been unsure of him it would’ve been a long time ago when she first started working on their planes.

There is just something visceral about the body heat of another that she feels spread from her back down, the blush over her face formed on its own as Monarch just continues talking on and on about the academy, about what drove him there in the first place.

This is as casual as they let it be, and, perhaps, like Dip and Comic, maybe as long as they don’t question it this isn’t weird.

Prez would rather feel intimate with a hunk than awkward anyway.

Why would she feel any sorta deep attachment to someone who she has given complete trust in her life to anyway? Why would she feel anything for a man that, at 20,000 feet, keeps her safe?

She likes to think she’s a little less dramatic and vain than that, but it’s hard to think when she’s on his wing for once and not having his back.

If Monarch is Kaiser’s dragon, then, she thinks in an alcohol haze, perhaps she is the treasure of him with how he holds her right now.

* * *

Perhaps it’s not completely unpredictable that unloading rounds and rounds into the ceiling of the dance club was not a way to stay completely below the radar, because, somehow, even over the roar of EDM, the ubiquitous sound of police sirens is heard.

It is Monarch that hears them first as his arms go tense around Prez’s shoulder, and just before Prez can fully ball herself up and lean into the man after an unknown time of simply just vibing with her pilot, her friend, he is too his feet looking up and out at the dance floor.

“Uh oh looks like the five-oh!” Galaxy screams into the mic as he is half way already out from behind the DJ stand. “All elements scatter!” He sounds like he’s having fun, play on words with his duties as an AWACS screamed out to any Sicario in the club as he busts through the stage’s back exit through incalculable amounts of wire and electronics. The music goes dead, and sooner rather than later police are piling into the front, yelling for any and all mercenaries to put their hands up and get ready to be detained on account of, very blatantly, breaching the peace.

The roof is addled with gunshots, and thankfully no one is as inebriated tonight as to turn those guns against the police doing their jobs as they arrive by the car load through the club’s entrance, however Kaiser is always colorful.

“You’ll never catch me alive as long as my name is-!” Kaiser screams out the name of the current Federation Prime Executive as he jumps, flies off his stand and into a crowd that is half panicking and half trying to leave anyway they can.

“Oh shit.” Prez is muffled through another swig of vodka and a mouthful of tater tots to go. A good idea Monarch figures as he does the same, people on their floor scattering as well to the winds, trying to clamber down stairs that lead up to that VIP section.

It’s not like Prez has pockets in that form fitting dress, so she still carries Comic’s gun in her hands plainly. It’s not the best idea, but she knows the alternative: handing it to Monarch. Hitman 1 accepts it without complaint, carrying it in his waistband above his back pockets.

He can only state the obvious to her as they have both sobered up quite well with the appearance of the police. It’s not exactly dire but they’d rather not spend a night (or several) in the clink.

“Yeah, we should move.” So easy they fall back into combat tones with each other, but it is their natural at this point as the leave that glass box of a VIP seating arrangement amid a wave of people. The problem is very apparent: as the crowd of people rushes down, a squad of police is coming up with cuffs abound for almost every single person there that looks remotely dangerous. “Uhh, I think I’ll be fine.”

It’s a cross between puppy dog eyes and utter betrayal that Monarch gives her in that crowd of people, the lights of the EDM set still going. She only brashly reaches up to pinch his face. “Don’t be like that, come on, if this is anything like the bar I worked at I should have a way out.”

The good thing about the Federation’s rampant imperialism is that the world had been exposed to its building and architectural prefabs. This building was converted from one such design, and she had gone to school exactly to dissect them.

She’s wearing heels for the first time in years, and she’s not surprised that they didn’t last the night as she kicked them off. “You’re carrying me home.”

Monarch grumbles, what else is new? A tongue stuck out at him is her response as she takes his hand and leads them backwards, through a swirl of yuppies dressed like them and mercenaries who are looking a little worse for wear.

Normally one might expect that the mercs there that are carrying might instantly get into a rather intense gun battle with the police, however there are polite places on earth where even criminal respect the law to a certain extent.

It’s all business, on both ends of the spectrum, so down on the ground floor the batons start coming out and the bottles start breaking and suddenly it’s a brawl as, like the flight mercenaries they are, they have a birds eye view of it as Prez leads them into a back hallway, still decorated in its glitzy fashion.

“Great thing about prefabs like this is-“ Prez doesn’t finish as she wedges herself into a maintenance closet door, Monarch standing on guard as she does it as more and more people pass by them in a rush to try and get out. The door flies open with a bash from her, she steps in tugging on Monarch’s back as they both enter.

On the wooden floor is a panel, liftable: they dig their hands into it after tossing asides the mop bucket and cleaning supplies.

“Internal crawlspace, this should go out to somewhere around to the venting system, which then, usually, has an exit around the back for exhaust.”

There’s a pregnant pause at the ladder down to that in-between walls type of crawlway, Monarch looking down on it as the door behind them is locked and the rush of boots is heard distantly beyond it, getting closer. Monarch looks at his WSO with a certain amount of trepidation. She understands the look well enough.

“Ah. Right. Probably a good idea.”

There are a few reasons why she should go down first, but it sits oddly in her mind that she is the one leading. Her leading is a concept that is funny to think of. Technically, as Hitman 1, doesn’t she have the ability to order around Comic and Dip if it comes down to it? She never had that thought before.

She goes in because she knows the way.

She goes in because this is old hat to her, and climbing down these maintenance halls of this building is childhood poetry.

The Federation needed engineers and mechanics like her because the beast of its buildings throughout the world were maintained by them, and here she is using these pathways as an escape way. It’s barely tall enough for Monarch to stand up straight her hair brushing the metal roof, and barely wide enough for them to move slanted through. Pipes and electronics move on either side of them as they enter, and it smells of spilled booze rings of shellshock through muted brawls and people running. She figures they are about head level with the dance floor as she leads them through accessways lighted only from air vents above.

To be fair it’s not any better than the lighting on the dance floor, but they’re used to the low light.

There’s an old tale in Cascadia, he speaks to Prez as they slowly make their way through, people yelling of rights and lawyers and police brutality above them.

“Yeah?” She asks, intrigued.

There’s a way that all Cascadian children know how to return home to the Dust Mother.

It’s by midnight light.

There’s a vent above their head, and people are on it. It’s the police:

 _“Round them up, throw them in the wagon. Raise our rates and any who can’t pay get to stay behind bars for the week. Some shit, innit?”_ Prez stops a little too fast for Monarch and they bump into each other:

“Eep!”

_“What was that?”_

Monarch has no problem being quiet. It’s his nature.

It’s his nature that makes him more comfortable as the cops above them wonder where the hell that bump was as their heads start on a swivel and they start asking people if they heard that. Prez holds her teeth so tightly together she swears they will crack, and her shoulders are shaking as shadows shift above them. She can see the branding of the cop’s boot as they stand over them all, hearing people get shuffled out in cuffs and more cops come in.

He doesn’t need permissions this time as he reaches up and touches her shoulder, holding it tight as he has his eyes up looking at the clueless policemen picking their brain about things they heard.

She tries her best to move back, but Monarch does not move, so instead she only moves into him again, flattening herself across his chest as they stay like that.

* * *

Robin Kuo is nineteen years old, and she’s dragged another boy into the dark places of the bar she works at after hours. He’s a Magadanian teen about the same age as her, and they know each other because they both work for that bar. It’s a little different for him because he has the job because of his father instead of the good and hard work she does, however the frustration of working there is shared by both of them all of up to.

“Eep!” She squeaks the second he nips at her neck. “Aw, jeeze. I can’t even see you here.”

“ _Da_ , I’m sure you can feel though.”

She does very much so as they indulge in the dark the pains of growing up in a crowded city.

* * *

She thinks of her past, and suddenly she’s aware that the only time she’s shared this space with a boy is for topics that make her heat up like an afterburn. Though she’s older now, and beyond silly things that would’ve made her fluster. What makes her pause, absolutely down to her core, is just who she is with right now:

Her hands are squished up against the front of herself, pinned between herself and him, palms laying on a slowly breathing chest, each inhale and exhale controlled in a way that exudes pure discipline.

He’s just a man. That she has to remind herself every time they come back from sortie. He’s just a man, and not a veritable god of death that she hears so often over open microphones from the enemies he’s flying over. He’s not a Crown, he’s not the manifestation of years of mercenary anger after Oceania, he’s not (she hopes) one of those legendary Signatures that people in their trade talk about like dragons and legends from a mythical age. He’s just a man.

That thinking backfires as she thinks of him, for one of the first times now, as one.

The cops take their sweet time standing where they are at the vents, and they don’t move, not risking another sound to make, and sooner rather than later she moves her hands off his chest to limply around his lower back, bringing her ever the more closer to him.

And suddenly it’s not about waiting for the cops to pass, or hiding out trying not to make a sound. Instead, it’s about how wonderful and complete it feels to be so close and how warm it is to be with another. The dress she wears doesn’t leave much to the imagination with how it hugs her, so up against Monarch’s form it’s as if she really is skin to skin with him.

Her dress is open back and she feels, distinctly, the palm of his hand come across her shoulder blades as he too relents and relaxes into something a little more bearable. His fingers are soft, softer than she would ever guess, and they burn into her skin until it settles over her feeling like the spread of a hot water’s steam. She knows he can feel her goosebumps rise, she knows it means he doesn’t mind when she brings her forehead down to rest on his chest. She knows it means something when the hand at her back starts rubbing the tiniest circles that only she can really feel, and it stirs something in her stomach and makes electricity fire off behind her eyes.

It was once, after their first few sorties, that Monarch told her that she had been the best WSO that ever served him. It was if, his words, she was inside his head. She knew when to take the best shots, call out the right targets, tell him the correct information in the air. But what about now?

Every breath she takes takes in his smell tonight, and the heat of the air around them only perpetrates it around her.

What could he possibly be thinking? If she could give up a years pay she would do it to know the answer now.

His other hand, oh how could she forget his other hand, it’s lower on her back, and then it’s almost too low as she feels it lax and droop just the slightest, just shy over the curve of her backside.

She says nothing, and his breathing does not change. That’s all she has to go off of as she opens her eyes and sees only the white shirt and suit he wears.

They’re friendly, friends, outside of the cockpit. It’s a normal relationship she images to anyone who sees it from the outside, and she thought it was too. Though so were Dip and Comic, and the true nature of their relationship was as complicated as the wiring of their jets.

What does she think of her flight lead?

She thinks too much, right now. She’s thinking too much as a hand is right above her ass and the other is writing holy designs into her shoulders that threatens to just make her feel divine, and she doesn’t know if it is simply a unconscious mistake on his end, or if that this is just what happens when two adults like them are chest to chest in the dark places of the world, and she knows that maybe her flight lead has cared more for her than almost anyone on this planet.

Perhaps it was a technicality of her position, but she did not think of semantics when she felt good, and right, and maybe a slight bit excited just being like this.

In her ears her heart is thumping, and she can hear the very slight coil whine of the fans above them with the drone of the building, and suddenly she is facing very broad and very specific questions in her head all at once. Questions that range from would she? To questions that range to should she?

It’s silenced as she feels the pressure on the hand on her back, pulling her even deeper into an embrace than she ever thought, and for a split second she wants more.

“Nnh.” The sound escapes from her lips, and finally she looks up and sees the face of her flight lead, inches from her, looking down on her with an unreadable look.

In that moment, anything could happen.

Her hands grab onto a strong back and they roam, very slowly, taking in as much as she can as she feels the pistol rub against her palms as her finger tips roam the back waistband. The joke is too easy to make, so she doesn’t.

_“Look, why we don’t just cordon the city off from mercenaries I don’t know.”_

_“You know why, skippy, because they bring in good money. And you seen how much stone is left on the floor? That’s all for us now.”_

The cops talk above them, but Prez really doesn’t care at this point as her hearing goes hollow.

It’s nostalgia that rises to her thoughts of what she’d be doing right now if this was an old flame, in the shadows like this.

She doesn’t ask what he’s doing, she doesn’t wonder why. This feels good. The hand on her shoulders raises a bit, and it runs over the strap of her dress. The hand over the small of her back moves and she sucks in a breath, anticipating what she cannot bare to say even in her mind. It doesn’t happen, and it roams over her hip.

Half-lidded, her eyes are like a wolf’s in the dark. “Tell me,” she whispers, and her breath is hot against his neck. “Is this where you **want** to be-“ She says his name. “Am I who all you need?”

Nothing, and everything could happen. His hands, Cascadians are always so conscious about their hands, they glaze over her body in ways that are not enough, and yet it is. It’s tantalizing, it’s not exactly chaste, and yet she is fully enjoying it in the way oil floats on water: it is riding on edges that are easily malleable, easily formable, easily broken.

No one would ever know if something would happen in there, and that, by itself, to Prez is almost too much for her.

Does she like her flight lead like this? Does he like her like this?

The thrill of uncertainty gives way to sensual conditions and what-ifs.

His hand roams up, to the side of her body, coming along the underside of her arm as she nearly whimpers at the sensation, distracting her as he simply takes her hand in his and holds it to her chest.

He shakes his head, locking eyes with her. But for what? To stay quiet? To deny her something deeper? To be coy?

She feels his heartbeat with that held hand, and he lets go again, tracing the path he came and settling on her hip again through that glassy, silver dress.

A thousand things she wants to say but cannot risk.

Is he just playing around? She was at the very least, slipping a hand into his suit’s back pocket as the other came back around, twisting and knotting balls of clothes at his chest softly as if feeling beneath it.

The only answer she gets is the one that he holds her by, leaning down, and she freezes, closing her eyes as she can feel the heat of his skin graze over one side of her face. The breath on her ear, it delivers words:

_Don’t I treat you just right?_

* * *

Their Ronin finds them, two hours later, down the street on the corner.

“The blazes happened to you two?” They look like they’ve been toasted, to his view, and she is being carried on her back. Her heels are gone and the wet street beneath them is not kind to bare soles.

Prez only shakes her head, undoing her hair tie and the frizziness of it is out against city air. “We were hiding from the cops in the maintenance ways, shit gets hot, alright?”

Monarch gives no further answers as they nod, and Ronin leads them back to safety.


End file.
